10-20 Sites and Cortical Functions

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Frontals

The area around F8 is an emotional regulation area. The PFC is the brakes on many functions in the brain. Improving blood supply improves the metabolic support for activating and sustaining those functions, cognitive, self-control, emotional brightness and stability among others.

F7 and F8 are important impulse control sites. F8 in particular helps with emotional regulation and social inhibition. High fast or slow activity there can be a problem. Sometimes a very hot F8, with lots of beta or high-beta, would fit with an overly inhibited emotional response; lots of alpha, theta or delta would suggest poor inhibition. However, look for any frequency that appears out of whack, and chances are that training that will have a positive impact.

Working memory is related to areas in the pre-frontal cortex, primarily the dorsolateral PFC and primarily on the left side, so around F7 and F3; but there are also areas in the posterior parietal lobe, further back from P3 and P4 that are involved.

F7 and F8 are both control centers (among many other things). F7 is more related to verbal and behavioral impulse control; F8 is more related to social inhibition and emotional control.

F7 is very near Broca’s area, so it is a good place to train for speech or language output problems. There are also a number of sources who say that it is a verbal and physical inhibition site.

F7 and F8 are prefrontal, dorsolateral cortex, more related to impulse control among other things.

Fp01 is using a zero, not an O. It is a site in the eye socket, with the electrode placed against the top of the socket near the nose, so it is facing up toward the top of the head. There is an acu-pressure point (a slight indentation in the bone there) often used for headaches. That’s where I place the active electrode. Obviously you have to be very careful not to get anything in the eye, it’s hard to keep the electrode in place and eye-blink artifact can severely affect your signal.

Depending on where you put your reference, the Fpo2 site would affect the orbito-frontal prefrontal cortex (the shelf that runs back from the forehead over the eye sockets), which is a major emotional balance and control area. The amygdala would communicate with this area, but the amygdala itself is invisible to EEG, because it has the “wrong” type of neurons in it.

Central

If you look at a picture of the brain, you’ll note that the central sulcus, which divides the front from the back runs in a chevron shape across the center of the head. It veers toward the rear in the middle. The sensory motor cortex runs about an inch on either side of the line, sensory behind it and motor in front.

The sensory-motor cortex follows the central sulcus, the valley across the brain from side to side that separates the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain. Approximately an inch in front of the line is the motor area of the sensory-motor cortex (since the frontal lobe is more involved with motor functions) and the inch or so behind the the line is the sensory area (back of the brain is sensory processor). Because the line does not, like most things in nature, follow a straight line, it actually forms a kind of chevron that is further back at the top of the brain than on either side. Hence, when you draw a nice straight line across the head and mark it with C3, Cz and C4, it turns out that C3 and C4 are behind the sulcus, in the sensory area, and Cz is in front of it, in the motor area. Training at C4 tends to help more with sensory processing, reducing distractibility, etc. and Cz tends to help more with motor control, reducing impulsivity, etc.

Cz works directly over the basal ganglia.

CP5: It’s roughly where the temporal, occipital and parietal lobes meet on the left, above the back of the left ear an inch or so.

Temporals

T5 and T6 are on the equator that runs around the circumference of the head from the middle of the valley that crosses the forehead above the supra-orbital ridge, just touching the top of the left and right ears and running through Oz (about 1.5 inches above the inion). They are 70% of the total distance from Fpz to Oz on that line back from Fpz. T3 and T4 are 50% of the distance and Oz is 100% of the distance, so if you use the hand-measuring technique I teach in level 1, you can find them quite easily, or you can use a tape-measure.

They are great sites for learning disability and sensory integration issues.

Auditory processing is done in the temporal sites, around T5 and T6.

The amygdala and hippocampus–main emotional and memory structures inside the temporal lobes on each side–handle different functions: left side handles declarative memory–the narrative of what happened–and right side handles feeling-tone memory–how I felt about what happened. When trauma is abusive (someone/something comes across the line between their space and mine aggressively and I can’t stop it) the narrative memory can get lost in dissociation (delta) while the feeling tone becomes super strong. When something triggers the memory module, the right side fires strongly (hippocampus enervated by the amygdala which triggers the fight/flight response, activates the right temporal lobe while the left is still “in the dark”.) If the trauma is neglective (I needed something and it wasn’t able to get it), the narrative memory remains but the emotional response (which is “cold” rather than hot) is relatively inactive. So the left side activates, and the right does not.

Parietals

P4 is the site where we distinguish ourselves in space, where I end and the rest of the world begins. People who are under-activated here can bump into things a lot.

The parietals are math calculation and concept territory. P3 can be helpful in calculation and counting; P4 more for math concepts.

Facial recognition is generally found to be in the right parietal lobe, somewhere just above T6.

The area between P3 and T5 is very active in integrating material and handling language tasks. If you find slow areas on either side, it would be worth training back there to reduce it.

Left Hemisphere vs Right

The right and left hemispheres are geographically and functionally different.

The left has more neurons, more closely packed, and the left side neurons tend to have short connections, so they work in their own neighborhoods. Frontal neurons work with frontal neurons; parietal with parietal, etc. They don’t pay much attention to other points of view. The left hemisphere is the side of rules, so rule-based processes like language and calculation are handled there. The left side tends to put things in categories and have a limited ability to deal with individuals. Once it finds an approach that works for a category (according to its definition of what “works”), it tends to apply that directly. Life is simpler for the left side. Nuances aren’t very important.

The right hemisphere has fewer neurons, more spread out, and it has many more connections among separate groups of neurons. Frontal neurons are sharing information with temporal and parietal neurons, so the right side provides a view of the context of our experience. Right hemisphere specializes in novelty–situations for which there aren’t yet any rules set up on the left. They are much better qualified to deal with things like music, which, like calculation, has a mathematical basis, but is much more about feelings and moods than about getting an answer. Left hemisphere hears the words someone says; right hemisphere understands the tone of voice, facial expressions, etc., which tend to be important in social interaction. The right side recognizes categories, but rather than placing individuals in categories, it tends to identify ways in which an individual differs from the category, so it is more about nuance.

The two hemispheres are also most commonly energetically different as well.

The left side, with its short connections, is about processing with faster beta speeds, which are important for language and calculation types of thought. The right side is more about integrating multiple sources of information, so alpha and slow beta (12-15 Hz) are more useful frequencies. We talk about reversals, where the right hemisphere has more faster activity than the left, or where the left has more alpha than the right. In other words, the hemispheres are trying to act like each other instead of like themselves. A faster right hemisphere doesn’t integrate information before making decisions, so it often results in anxiety or anger, because it doesn’t get all the information before making a decision. A slower left hemisphere can’t process as effectively.

When someone has one or more of these complaints about how his brain works, it may well be related to beta reversals: 1. Excessive activation in the area of behavior (hyperactivity, fidgeting, inability to be still); 2. Excessive activation in the area of sensory sensitivity (easily distracted, sensitive to light or sound); 3. Excessive mental activation (can’t stop thinking, racing mind); 4. Excessive emotional reactivity.

The BAL4C RH bipolar protocol can be very effective for quieting these problems. It does this by inhibiting excessive fast activity and rewarding very slow frequencies to calm the right hemisphere, so it can begin to do what it is designed to do more effectively–and let the left hemisphere do its job as well. As usual, however, brains, like other parts of the body, can produce the same symptoms in a number of different ways. So not all brains who show these symptoms have the fast right side. In those cases, BAL4C RH bipolar probably won’t do much to resolve the problem.

Mastoid Crease

Behind the right ear, near where the ear attaches to the scalp at the top, there is a valley in the heavy bone there, running usually from the ear toward the back of the head.

A2 is an inert site, down below the level of brain. The mastoid crease is not. It is up just below the level of T4 and T6, partway between them.

In a bipolar montage, we are training all the dipoles in the line from one site to the other which are mostly parallel to the line.

Hence MC2 to Fp1 runs diagonally through the brain, largely through subcortical areas, but picking up the anterior cingulate, which runs beneath the cortex, and the orbitofrontal cortex on the left side, an area of the Prefrontal than runs back over the eye socket.

Both are involved in informing the PFC that a task has been completed and can be dropped from the agenda (if that doesn’t happen, then we get repetitive obsessive or compulsive activity). The anterior cingulate is also involved in these types of behavior.

Music and Calculation

Brain areas for calculation (left parietal) and reading music (left temporal) are on the left (more timing-related) areas of the brain. Much of music is right-sided. Ability to do math visually (counting things and combining them) is also right-sided. Adding and subtracting area fairly easy to do this way, but multiplication and division don’t work so well that way above fairly small numbers.

Spelling

In terms specifically of spelling, spell PIT. The Posterior Inferior Temporal area on the left (Brodmann’s area 37) is heavily involved in spelling. It is an area toward the back of the temporal lobe where it links with the occipital (linking visual and auditory in complex language processing). T5 would be the closest site here. Certainly, when you do any assessment on a person with learning issues, T5 and T6 are a good optional site pair to include.

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